Pros

A few days into my career at Animalz, I knew it was a great fit. However, because of past toxic job experiences, I was wary that I was in a "honeymoon" phase that would eventually wear off. Over a year later, it still hasn't worn off! No company is perfect, but what makes Animalz stand out is that leadership genuinely cares about their people and is working to make things better. Sometimes that progress is slow, sometimes it creates growing pains, etc. But I've been in places where no progress is made at all...so dealing with growing pains feels far better. It's a sign that they're continually trying to make things better and are always willing to admit when they're wrong and need to change direction. Agency life in general can be hard. It requires a focus on production, which can be stressful. But over the years they've reduced the number of articles to a manageable amount after listening to their employees. They're also working on ways to reduce the emphasis on production numbers. That's not an easy task in an agency environment, but they're willing to take it on for our sake. As far as workload, the expectation is 8 articles a month (on the months you don't take PTO). If you come from agency life, you know how manageable this is compared to most agencies that require you to write an article a day sometimes. The feedback process is hefty, so in general, the articles do take longer from start to finish, but it's so nice to be able to focus on quality over quantity.

Cons

If you haven't been in a position where you're writing full-time (or if you have no agency experience), there might be a steep learning curve to ramp up to the production required. So if you're genuinely not interested in writing full time, this probably isn't the position for you. The company is also facing growing pains right now (largely due to restructuring how teams work). This is natural with any company, but if you're easily stressed out by change then maybe consider applying 6 months from now when things have stabilized.

Pros

The writers and editors here are incredibly talented and wonderful colleagues. I learned so much from them. The hours could be wonderfully flexible if you were lucky with your assignments.

Cons

Leadership at Animalz is bafflingly incompetent. They squandered an excellent reputation and a stable of skilled content marketing professionals for no discernible reason with their poor decision-making and continuous harebrained "re-orgs". Content Marketers (CMs) repeatedly identified specific issues that were getting in the way of article deliveries. These issues---such as poorly written briefs and lack of strategy, lack of a clear delivery process, and difficult or slow-to-respond customers---would have been easy to address but leadership failed to hear it every single time. Instead of providing CMs the resources they needed to do their jobs well and deliver income for the company, leadership instead chose to gaslight and punish them with PIPs in strange and arbitrary ways. Numerous CMs were put on PIPs for underdelivering article credits, despite not having been assigned enough articles for the month by their managers or facing roadblocks with customers they needed help with but didn't get. Their approach was cruel, but even more frustratingly it was completely ineffective. We all wanted to deliver but were undermined in our ability to do so and then punished for that failure. Not a great business strategy. It must be made clear that the failure starts at the top - with umbrella company Golden Wok and its owner Walter Chen. He placed unskilled, inexperienced people in key leadership roles, seemingly just for their value as yes-men rather than their skill or business acumen. It shows. All of the current leadership are woefully underqualified for their roles and have flailed their way to the top, taking the company down underneath them. His most recent decision seems to be suddenly converting the company to a freelance model, just six weeks after another expensive and poorly planned re-org. They didn't seem to anticipate that anyone wouldn't want to come back to freelance for them after being unceremoniously laid off and having their health insurance stripped from them with a single day's notice. If they'd executed the change with an ounce more compassion, it might have worked, but they shot themselves in the foot yet again by being unnecessarily inhumane to their employees. They seem genuinely shocked that their writers and editors aren't happy (or desperate) enough to take the deal. From a business perspective, it's hard to see what the value add is for either new "freelancers" or customers. While Animalz used to offer a strong support team of researchers, editors, copyeditors, and strategists, all those roles have been stripped over time. Their value as a middleman is nonexistent. I would severely caution anyone against seeking employment or doing business with any of the companies under his umbrella. Animalz is hemorrhaging employees and customers and for good reason. For any other businesses reading this: hire former Animalz writers and editors. You've just been gifted an incredible flood of talent.